This paper explores whether professional macroeconomic forecasters manipulate their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We model a referendum in which a voter chooses between two policies. The voter relies on a forecaster to learn about the macroeconomic consequences of the policies. The...

Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when...

I study sequential contests where the efforts of earlier players may be disclosed to later players by nature or by design. The model has many applications, including rent seeking, R&D, oligopoly, public goods provision, and tragedy of the commons. I show that information about other players'...

Do contributions to online content platforms induce a feedback loop of ever more user-generated content or will they discourage future contributions? To assess this, we use a randomized field experiment which added content to some pages in Wikipedia while leaving similar pages unchanged. We find...

We document a causal influence of online user-generated information on realworld economic outcomes. In particular, we conduct a randomized field experiment to test whether additional information on Wikipedia about cities affects tourists' choices of overnight visits. Our treatment of adding...

We develop a model of credit rating agencies (CRAs) based on reputation concerns. Ratings a ffect investors' choice and, thereby, also issuers' access to funding and default risk. We show that in equilibrium - the informational content of credit ratings is inferior to that of CRAs' private...

We develop a model of credit rating agencies (CRAs) based on reputation concerns. Ratings affect investors' choice and, thereby, also issuers' access to funding and default risk. We show that - in equilibrium - the informational content of credit ratings is inferior to that of CRAs' private...